page_title: Basilan
section_title: Return of rubber
hierarchical_section_title: Basilan / Economy / Return of rubber
caption_attribution_description: Hevea brasiliensis English: Location: Basilan Island; Mindanao, Philippines. Date: 1984 Photographer: Randy C. Bunney A plantation worker cuts into a rubber tree to harvest latex used as a main ingredient in making natural rubber.
context_page_description: The Province of Basilan is an island province of the Philippines in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region. Basilan Island is the largest and northernmost of the major islands of the Sulu Archipelago. It is just off the southern coast of the geographic Zamboanga Peninsula.
  Isabela, the former capital, is a component city under the provincial government of Basilan but is administered as part of the Zamboanga Peninsula Region and is listed statistically independent. The provincial capital has since been transferred to Lamitan.
  Basilan is home to three main ethnolingusitic groups: the indigenous Yakans, and the later-arriving Tausugs and Chavacanos. The Yakans and Tausugs are predominantly Muslim, while the Chavacano are mainly Christian. There are also a number of smaller ethnic groups. Although the official languages are Tagalog and English, the main native language is Yakan and lingua franca is Chavacano. Other languages include Tausug, Cebuano, and Sama.
  Basilan, although classified as a 3rd-class province in terms of gross provincial income, has one of the lowest incidences of poverty in the Philippines, ranked 20 among the Philippines' 80 provinces.
context_section_description: By 2003, Basilan embarked on large-scale replanting programs covering some 50,000 hectares (120,000 acres) of privately owned and/or cooperative-controlled lands, mainly for rubber and cassava. As of 2006, the province had 15,503 hectares (38,310 acres) planted, of which 7,148 hectares (17,660 acres) were owned by individual farmers and the rest by cooperatives. The exact land area devoted to rubber could reach over 20,000 hectares (49,000 acres), as there are hundreds of unrecorded small rubber growers and farmers. The provincial government reports that almost half or 7,029.47 hectares (17,370.2 acres) are immature, about a fifth or 3,143.36 hectares (7,767.4 acres) is classed as "less-productive", and a little under a third or 4,880.21 hectares (12,059.3 acres) is described as "productive."
  A consortium of agrarian reform beneficiaries has been formed to improve quality and increase production. The Isla Corridor Consortium Agrarian Reform Communities not only sees itself as reviving the rubber industry, it also wants to help in the transformation of the battle-scarred province. The consortium, composed of the United Workers Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries Multipurpose Cooperative, Lamitan Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries Cooperative, Santa Clara, and the Latuan Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries Association, Inc., accounts for a total area of about 6,000 hectares (15,000 acres), some 80% of which is planted with rubber trees.
caption: Worker in a rubber producing plantation.[20]
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